Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

About the Assignment

This popular assignment requires students to take the laws of negligence and apply them to O'Connor's short story to decide if the grandmother would be held legally responsible for the deaths of her family members. It challenges students to apply abstract concepts from one text to the concrete details of another, requiring extremely close reading, use of evidence, and grappling with the moral issues of the short story.

Relating Literary Discussion to Legal Analysis
Speaking of moral issues, I like to preface this assignment with a discussion of the short story in religious-moral terms, explaining that contrary to appearances, O'Connor is a serious Catholic thinker and writer who sought to admonish the inadequately faithful. We discuss the grandmother's failings, taking her from a mildly annoying but endearing granny to a seriously flawed sinner. I then suggest that O'Connor may be saying that when a person's heart is rotten, all her deeds will lead to ruin no matter how seemingly innocuous. In fact, I think a hallmark of O'Connor's fiction is the disproportionate punishments that are wreaked upon apparently venial sinners. From O'Connor's harsh viewpoint, the sinful person is responsible for all harms flowing from her deeds.

The law, ironically, is more forgiving. Every step and word of the grandmother plays a sizable part in her family's destruction, but the law would likely not hold her liable for some (most? any?) of them. As we discuss her legal liability, students have to re-think what they really blame her for and the difference between moral and legal responsibility.

Preparation

Students may have trouble wielding these legal terms, and they often want guidance as to how to structure an essay like this. As for the latter concern, I make it fairly mechanical for them. Pick three of grandmother's misdeeds and devote one paragraph to each. For each, be sure to discuss all four elements of negligence. But don't race through them. Take the time to argue and bring in detailed facts from the story. This is a great exercise in anticipating the opposition, and I tell students that if they fail to bring up opposing viewpoints, their grade will be lower.

I also have to remind students that nothing says the grandmother has to be found liable for everything. It's okay for the essay to absolve her of some or all her misdeeds. After the preliminary discussion, they are sometimes a bit worked up against her and eager to throw the book at her.

By the time we have gone through a few examples of negligence from the book (such as Riss v. New York and DeLong v. Erie County) or elsewhere, students are fairly comfortable. I also bring up famous cases (the spilled McDonalds coffee), as well as urban legends (the burglar falling through the skylight and suing the homeowner). These definitely awaken the excitement of discussing liability.

The Legalese

I tell students that the four elements raise the following questions. Duty: What should she have done. Breach: What did she do instead and is that reasonable? Proximate Cause:  Is that deed really what caused the harm? Damage: What happened?

Duty can cause some difficulty. I lead them with this: "In situation X, a reasonable person would be expected to...." That usually helps, but students do tend to leave duty out entirely and jump straight into the question of breach.

Breach is easy, but students must remember not to assume that her supposed misdeed was unreasonable. Here is an opportunity to argue as to whether she did what was reasonable under the circumstances, and to invoke "the circumstances" means to refer to the text with precision. For example, grandmother took them off the highway onto a dirt road to see a house from her past. Are we sure that was a lapse/breach in her duty? Should she have known the road was dangerous or that departure from the highway was dangerous? Did the circumstances make her choice more blameworthy?

Proximate Cause is the most challenging and provides the most room for argument. Granted that the grandmother did something wrong, did it really lead to the car accident and/or shootings? For example, the grandmother pleaded for her own lives and ignored the plight of her descendants. But did this matter? Would they have been killed regardless? What in the text suggests one way or the other? This element also presents the chance to shift the blame to other superseding causes and to argue for their significance.

The element of Damages is the one part that presents no difficulty.